The goal of this research is to present the advantages and disadvantages of Human Plant Interfaces. Moreover, this thesis explores the interdisciplinary commonalities of botany, art and interface design. The qualitative analysis approach in this thesis reveals elementary functions and technical implementations of Human Plant Interfaces. The results are categorized by these functions and applications in five different chapters. The first chapter describes visualizing techniques with plants, which can be associated with an actuator or feedback channel in an interactive system. The chapter about biosensing presents different implementation techniques for utilizing plants as a sensor (input channel) for interactive applications. The functionality of these bio sensors are compared to the common electronic sensor measurements of pressure, light, proximity, acoustic, tilt, motion, and orientation. The following chapters 3.3 and chapter 3.4 investigate Human Plant Interface applications in the domain of environmental and social design. All sections in chapter 3 explore the integration of technology in nature driven environments.

Interactions between humans and plants exist since humans exist. Plants are a vital part of the human ecosystem. Surprisingly, no universally valid scientific terminology for this kind of interaction between humans and plants is determined. Biology and the social science use the term people plant relationships or Ethnobotany for describing their research scope of Human Plant Interaction. Also the art domain deals with blurry definitions. The German art field uses very often the term “botanische Kunst” or “Pflanzenkunst” [Bartel2001]. The English term is mostly “Land Art”, which does not describe artistic approaches with plants very well [KastnerWallis2010]. In Interaction Design it is even more complicated. Some projects are named as natural or organic interfaces based on the applied material. In Human Computer Interaction the term natural or organic interfaces is used completely different. Natural and organic interfaces are strongly connected to tangible and gestural interfaces [ACM2008]. It describes how humans can interact with objects in general. In an interactive art context, plant based artworks in combination with technology is mostly associated to hybrid art, which unfortunately excludes the interactive characteristic of Human Plant Interfaces. In this thesis the problem of a definition of plant based interfaces is solved pragmatically through a new revisited description of plant based interfaces. Read more...

For two or three years I wanted to work seriously with Arduino. During this time I have done the same basic LED exercises again and again. Just for keeping alive my basic knowledge. Finally and luckily, I had to visit the Advanced Microcontroller lecture by Laurent Mignonneau. Laurent is the definition of a Geek himself. Not much talking, just doing, and a fucking huge amount of knowledge in electronics and programming. The assignment for his lecture was to create SOMETHING with a low resolution screen. Really advanced examples of a low resolution screen are the androp project (Making of | strobo animation) or Laurent's solar display (concept).

During the lectures Fashionable Technology I and II from Sabine Seymour, Andrea Suter and me improved the common usage of an umbrella. In the end we developed a concept of a self em-powered device for people’s well being. Our umbrella using the approaches of light therapy and autonomous power resources.

moodumbrella

moodumbrella detail

moodumbrella in use

We created a prototype for interviews and user testings and we made a survey in Linz during a rainy day. The Austrain people were very sceptical and did not want to be asked about their happiness on rainy days. However, we were able to get some very useful feedback. The video below will show you examples of the feedback mentioned.

In the end we wrote paper about the details of light therapy and discussing mobile energy resources for smart devices.

For my interactive installation "Sound Drawings" I decided to use the Harmony Drawing application. Meanwhile, the single brush version worked pretty stable with the sound analyzing. There was still one thing missing. It would be much cooler if more than one person can draw on the canvas. From the technical view it was very easy to implement. In the beginning I was a little bit scared if the realtime feedback is still good with more brushes at the same time. It was! For this reason here is the source code and my versions of testing for you.

I prepared a screencast for getting an idea and overview how it works. The principles are exactly the same as in the first version. The only exception is the "brushID" as a new parameter. Every API call uses this syntax:

1

apiFunctionName<em>brushID</em>parameter1 parameter2...

For creating a new brush use the command "setBrush brushID brushType". Afterwards you can use the API command "setCoordinate brushID xPos yPos" for drawing programmatically. If you want to use the mouse for drawing you must use the API command "selectBrush brushID" before drawing directly on the canvas!

All JavaScript codes and Max / MSP patches are included in the example file. For the sound drawing patch you must install the Max MSP Fiddler object, before you can try experimenting.

For several months I worked on technical paper about designing gestures for screen-based environments. Finally, it is finished and you can read it. Here is the abstract:

This paper analyses gesture design for pointing devices in screen-based environments. By exploring design patterns the analysis investigated the gesture design of five different end-user products: Desktop operating systems, mobile operating systems, 3rd Party software, small software products, and common hardware products. The beginning of the paper defines what a gesture is, and the various kinds of gestures. Afterwards the analysis merges the gesture design results with the basic commands for pointing devices. This approach points out which gestures are often used, and in which context they are used. The results give interaction designers and software engineers a guide for implementing gestures in their own products. Furthermore, the paper proposes solutions for gesture documentation, and a conceptual framework for complicated gestures. The last section takes an industrial design perspective on pointing devices as an input channel. It discusses the evolution of interface design from a hardware driven to a software driven approach.

Please note:

Unfortunately, I got sick on a long-term disease. Therefore it took me so long for writing this paper and that is also the reason why the data of the analysis is from January of 2010. However, in my opinion the results of my analysis are still valid. For more up-to-date data, please check the Touch Gesture Reference from LukeW.

Acknowledgement:

I am very happy about the support from my teachers, friends, and fellow students. Big thanks to Mahir M. Yavuz and Mathias Stäbler for the content feedback. Vesela Mihaylova for a great Adobe Illustrator and graphic design support. Tim Devine for transforming over 30 pages of my bad english in a readable form, and marking some unclear points of my paper. Dudes, thank you so much!

For exploring the JavaScript API in MAX / MSP / Jitter I decided to port the Harmony Web Application by Mr. Doob. I really fall in love with the different brush styles. MAX / MSP / Jitter is pretty cool for doing audio visual stuff, and I think the different brush style might be nice for this. Fortunately, Mr. Doob published the source code and the code is nice, too! Therefore, it was not so difficult to understand the code. During my porting process I had to consider four things: Read more...

During the first semester of my study Interface Culture at the University of Art in Linz I had to write some papers about interactive art. My first papers dealt with the history of interactive art and continued with some different art movements in this domain. In some cases I am more or less satisfied with my papers. Anyway, I think every 2page long paper contains some interesting points for Interaction Designer, Web Designer, Web Developer, Web Artists, Computer Scientists etc.. That is the reason why I want to share my written work with you.

Please consider that all my papers here were an assignment for the master classes of Interactive Art by Christa Sommerer. My papers don't meet the requirements of a scientific work despite the fact that the format seems to be scientific. All my texts represent partly more my own thoughts on the different art topics, so please interpret my papers as a short essay or summary. My thoughts are mainly based on the first and second references, which are mentioned at the end of each paper. I highly recommend to read these references, because they are a very good collection for delivering an introduction in the domain of interactive art. Thanks Christa for this great collection of references and the introduction!